


The Avengers Menagerie

by tarialdarion



Series: The Avengers Menagerie [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Bucky's Bunny Brigade, Pets, all of the Avengers have pets now, it's a thing, surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-19 23:19:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7381552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarialdarion/pseuds/tarialdarion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” – Anatole France</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Avengers Menagerie

Pets are just something that ends up happening in the Avengers Tower. It seems like Tony woke up one day and suddenly they were overrun with animals. Every single Avenger had their own pets that fit their personalities and quirks.

-

Bucky has an army of bunnies. Steve got him one when he first came to the Tower to help with his recovery and his hesitance in touching other people. It just snowballed from there (coincidentally, the first one was named Snowball). He has named every bunny in his army and he knows when one is missing or when someone has touched one. He’s a bit possessive. There was one memorable time when a new SHIELD agent picked one up and Sam quickly admonished him, “Woah, you should probably put that down.” The agent was completely baffled until, from around the corner, comes, “WHERE IS SNOWBALL”. The agent dropped the bunny and ran. Bucky came around the corner, looking Winter Soldier mad, and picked up Snowball and cuddled her, talking softly in Russian to her. And Sam just shakes his head.

News spread pretty quickly and no other SHIELD agents have tried to touch the bunnies. Thor, however, is allowed to touch the bunnies and has constant disagreements with the only other person allowed to touch them, Sam, about Bunny Snuggle Time. “IT WAS MY TURN WITH GUMDROP.” “NAY, THY TURN WAS AN HOUR HENCE.” 

(Bucky often has to break them up and ban them from Bunny Snuggle Time for the rest of the day.)

-

Sam has several gerbils. They are small and low maintenance so he could take care of them while living alone. Now that he’s at the Tower, he has started to train them to run through mazes. Thor and Clint find this endlessly amusing and have let them out of their cages on multiple occasions to watch the furballs run around looking for escape.

Tony always seems to walk past the two of them cheering the little creatures on. The first time it happened, he stopped and asked what was happening. That, he learned, was a mistake because it elicited the response, “We were just observing the delightful tricks that Sam has taught these small beasts!” from Thor and a cackle from Clint. The second time, he just facepalmed. After that, he just kept walking and let them deal with the Very Annoyed Sam when he found the loose gerbils.

(Very Annoyed Sam often made the two of them clean out the gerbils cage as punishment.)

-

Natasha has a cat. She was a stray and she chose Natasha, not the other way around. No one is surprised by this because if Natasha was going to have a pet, it would be one that is as strong as she is. Natasha names the cat Liho and she slinks around the Tower, quietly observing everything. She is only partial to Natasha (and sometimes Bruce; but that may have more to do with his fish pond than anything else) and refuses to sit on anyone else’s lap.

One late night, Tony was padding in from the kitchen to the living room with a cup of freshly poured coffee and he heard the soft sounds of singing. He peered in and saw Natasha curled up in the loveseat, partially turned away from him, singing softly in Russian to her lap. Tony heard a soft purring sound and smiled, slowly backing out of the doorway.

(And if Natasha starts murmuring the same Russian lullabies to him when he falls asleep on her shoulder at movie nights? Well, that’s just between them.)

-

Steve trains service dogs. He loves it and he talks about how fulfilling it is to many people but all the Avengers know that Steve somehow gets the most stubborn puppies on the planet. He will cajole and command and bribe and yet, the puppies will stare at him with “whut” looks on their adorable, slobbery faces. After a couple of hours, it turns into Steve standing in front of the puppies, swearing up a storm and yelling about “goddamn puppies who can’t even obey even one motherfucking command”.

Once, he was so frustrated that he picked one up and said, “WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME”. The small golden retriever puppy just barked happily and licked his face. Steve let out a strangled cry. Tony, of course, walked in at that moment and Steve thrust the puppy at him, yelling, “Take it! I can’t look at him anymore!”

Tony held the puppy in bewilderment while it happily took advantage of a new person to lick. Gizmo, Tony’s fluffy Korat kitten, sauntered into the room and Tony quickly scooped him up and dumped him in Steve’s empty arms. “Here,” Tony said, firmly. “Cuddle the kitten.” Steve collapsed on the bed, holding Gizmo and trying to block out the adorable picture that his boyfriend made holding such a cute (but annoying) puppy. He calmed down after kitten-and-Tony cuddles and eventually, the stubborn puppies were trained.

(Excessive yelling and rude comments about small dogs were still heard at times because the puppies did not get any less stubborn.)

-

Clint decided that texting was a boring method of communication and chose to train birds as a sort of homing pigeon system. He tried a pigeon but Tony put the kibosh on that pretty quickly (no pigeon use indoors was the new rule). Clint had started to branch out into other species of small birds that were smart and trainable. Soon, the birds were learning to take the messages and it only took a few more months before they were learning to take it to a specific person.

The only problem was that Clint could never get his birds to deliver the messages to the CORRECT person. This was discovered as an irreparable issue when Tony received a Hawk-text (Clint thought he was clever) while in the living room lounging with Steve and Bruce. He fell off the couch from laughing so hard at what he read on the piece of paper and that quickly aroused the curiosity of the other two. Steve wrestled the paper away from Tony, read it, and turned fire-engine red. Bruce read it over Steve’s shoulder, eyebrows steadily climbing up to his hairline. Clint came rushing into the room, out of breath, yelling, “TONY DON’T OPEN – oh.” Tony took one look at Clint and started laughing again.

(Clint learned that explicit messages sent to sexual partners should definitely be sent via a more reliable messaging service).

-

Bruce has a fish pond. It was a lovely, small thing in his room. He had requested it when Tony was designing the rooms so technically, he was the first to own a pet. Bruce has a few species of rare fish in the pond that he has collected in his travels and Natasha and Tony’s cats are fascinated by them.

Bruce likes to sit in his room and listen to slow waterfall of the pond while watching the cats’ heads dart back and forth, following the fishes’ movements. He tells the other Avengers that the sound of the water relaxes him. In reality, he finds the disappointed looks on the cats’ faces, after they have failed to catch a fish, hysterically funny.

(Tony ends up taking the brunt of this disappointment as the disgruntled cats come back to him and sit on his stomach, crying loudly for something to eat.)

-

Thor has a pet. It’s just an Asgardian pet and from what Tony has heard, Asgardian pets are more like tiger/lion/mammoth hybrids than fluffy ducklings. Thor has told them about his magnificent beast named Hvurr. Clint laughed for a long time about the name (“It rhymes with fur!”) and Thor had frowned severely at him (“IT IS A WARRIOR’S NAME.”). Thor told many stories about the grand adventures he and Hvurr had embarked upon, even as youngsters. It’s obvious to everyone in the Tower that Thor misses his pet and they try to cheer him up with their own.

Bucky lets him snuggle the bunnies (Sam wheedles his way into that arrangement too and no one is quite sure how he did that) while Natasha shows him how to feed her Liho treats without getting scratched. Steve lets Thor have puppy piles and will take him to work with kids who have service animals to the delight of both the kids AND the animals. Sam and Thor create new mazes for the gerbils to run through and Clint demands Thor’s help with training the birds, proclaiming that All-Speak has to be useful SOMEHOW. Bruce teaches him about the species of fish that he has in the pond and they talk for hours with Bruce soaking up every piece of fascinating information about the enchanting animals of Asgard that Thor imparts to him.

(There’s only one incident where they go to the zoo and Thor decides to free all the animals. Fortunately, that idea is shut down pretty quickly and they have a conversation about the purpose of zoos.)

-

Tony has Gizmo, two more kittens named Tesla and Quark, and two chinchillas named Cassini and Halley (because Tony is a science nerd at heart). The kittens are all different in personality, ranging from quiet and sweet to feisty and stubborn. Tony loves them all and loves sitting on his bed, working on his tablet, with a kitten laying on his head, another on his stomach, and the last one curled at his side with one of his hands idly stroking its fur. He draws peace from the gentle purring of his cats.

The chinchillas are kept down in his workshop where they have a giant pen to run free in. They are nocturnal (like Tony often is) and love to scuff around in their custom-built giant dust bath (which may or may NOT be shaped like the Starfleet symbol). When Tony is stumped or unsure about a decision, he comes here and enjoys the carefree playtime with Cass and Halley. This chinchilla heaven is his idea ground and Tony has come up with some brilliant inventions while watching the two chinchillas chase each other up climbing branches or teaching Cass to jump through a hoop.

-

Tony woke up one morning and the Tower was full of Avengers and animals. He woke up to Steve, kittens, and chinchillas downstairs. He woke up to stubborn puppies, bunny armies, and Thor’s new gerbil maze. He woke up to Russian lullabies, Hawk-texts, and Bruce’s weird one-eyed fish. He woke up one morning and they were a family, strange pets and all.


End file.
